"Ten o'clock"

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WHISTLER'S
Pie OCLOC

1388.

MR. WHISTLER’S

Oe OCT Ch

TEN O'CLOCK”

BY

J. A. M. WHISTLER

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
Che Viivergive Press, Cambridge
1888

Copyright, 1888,
By J. A. M. WHISTLER.

All rights reserved.

Delivered tn London,

Feb. 20, 1885.

At Cambridge,
March 24.

At Oxford,
April 30.

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Achaea

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Ratha

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Mae

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,

It is with great hesitation and much misgiving
that I appear before you, in the character of The
Preacher.

If timidity be at all allied to the virtue modesty, and
can find favour in your eyes, I pray you, for the sake
of that virtue, accord me your utmost indulgence.

I would plead for my want of habit, did it not seem
preposterous, judging from precedent, that aught save
the most efficient effrontery could be ever expected in
connection with my subject—for I will not conceal
from you that I mean to talk about Art. Yes, Art—
that has of late become, as far as much discussion and
writing can make it, a sort of common topic for the
tea-table.

Art is upon the Town !—to be chucked under the
chin by the passing gallant—to be enticed within the
gates of the householder—to be coaxed into company,
as a proof of culture and refinement.

If familiarity can breed contempt, certainly Art—or
what is currently taken for it—has been brought to its
lowest stage of intimacy.

The people have been harassed with Art in every
guise, and vexed with many methods as to its endurance.
They have been told how they shall love Art, and live
with it. Their homes have been invaded, their walls

8

/ covered with paper, their very dress taken to task—

until, roused at last, bewildered and filled with the
doubts and discomforts of senseless suggestion, they
resent such intrusion, and cast forth the false prophets,
who have brought the very name of the beautiful into
disrepute, and derision upon themselves.

Alas ! ladies and gentlemen, Art has been maligned.
She has naught in common with such practices. She
is a goddess of dainty thought—reticent of habit,
abjuring all obtrusiveness, purposing in no way to
better others.

She is, withal, selfishly occupied with her own per-
fection only—having no desire to teach—seeking and
finding the beautiful in all conditions and in all times,
as did her high priest Rembrandt, when he saw pic-
turesque grandeur and noble dignity in the Jews’
quarter of Amsterdam, and lamented not that its in-
habitants were not Greeks.

_/ As did Tintoret and Paul Veronese, among the
Venetians, while not halting to change the brocaded
silks for the classic draperies of Athens.

As did, at the Court of Philip, Velasquez, whose
Infantas, clad in ineesthetic hoops, are, as works of
Art, of the same quality as the Elgin marbles.

No reformers were these great men—no improvers
of the ways of others! Their productions alone were
their occupation, and, filled with the poetry of their
science, they required not to alter their surroundings—
for, as the laws of their Art were revealed to them,
they saw, in the development of their work, that real
beauty which, to them, was as much a matter of cer-
tainty and triumph as is to the astronomer the verifica-

9

tion of the result, foreseen with the light given to him
alone. In all this, their world was completely severed
from that of their fellow-creatures with whom senti-
ment is mistaken for poetry ; and for whom there is no
perfect work that shall not be explained by the benefit
conferred upon themselves.

Humanity takes the place of Art, and God’s creations
are excused by their usefulness. Beauty is confounded
with virtue, and, before a work of Art, it is asked:
** What good shall it do?”

Hence it is that nobility of action, in this life, is
hopelessly linked with the merit of the work that
portrays it; and thus the people have acquired the
habit of looking, as who should say, not a¢ a picture,
but ¢hrough it, at some human fact, that shall, or shall
not, from a social point of view, better their mental or
moral state. So we have come to hear of the painting
that elevates, and of the duty of the painter—of the
picture that is full of thought, and of the panel that
merely decorates.

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A favourite faith, dear to those who teach, is that
certain periods were especially artistic, and that nations,
readily named, were notably lovers of Art.

So we are told that the Greeks were, as a people,
worshippers of the beautiful, and that in the fifteenth
century Art was engrained in the multitude.

That the great masters lived in common under-
standing with their patrons—that the early Italians
were artists—all—and that the demand for the lovely
thing produced it.

That we, of to-day, in gross contrast to this Arcadian
purity, call for the ungainly, and obtain the ugly.

That, could we but change our habits and climate—
were we willing to wander in groves—could we be
roasted out of broadcloth—were we to do without
haste, and journey without speed, we should again
require the spoon of Queen Anne, and pick at our peas
with the fork of two prongs. And so, for the flock,
little hamlets grow near Hammersmith, and the steam
horse is scorned.

Useless! quite hopeless and false is the effort !—
built upon fable, and all because ‘a wise man has
uttered a vain thing and filled his belly with the East

_ wind,”

Listen! There never was an artistic period.

There never was an Art-loving nation.

£1

In the beginning, man went forth each day—some to
do battle, some to the chase ; others, again, to dig and
to delve in the field—all that they might gain and live,
or lose and die. Until there was found among them
one, differing from the rest, whose pursuits attracted
him not, and so he staid by the tents with the women,
and traced strange devices with a burnt stick upon a
gourd.

This man, who took no joy in the ways of his
brethren—who cared not for conquest, and fretted in
the field—this designer of quaint patterns—this deviser
of the beautiful—who perceived in Nature about him
curious curvings, as faces are seen in the fire—this
dreamer apart, was the first artist.

And when, from the field and from afar, there came
back the people, they took the gourd—and drank from
out of it.

And presently there came to this man another—and,
in time, others—of like nature, chosen by the Gods—
and so they worked together ; and soon they fashioned,

from the moistened earth, forms resembling the gourd. -

And with the power of creation, the heirloom of the
artist, presently they went beyond the slovenly sug-
gestion of Nature, and the first vase was born, in
beautiful proportion.

And the toilers tilled, and were athirst; and the
heroes returned from fresh victories, to rejoice and to
feast; and all drank alike from the artists’ goblets,
fashioned cunningly, taking no note the while of the
craftsman’s pride, and understanding not his glory in
his work ; drinking at the cup, not from choice, rot
from a consciousness that it was beautiful, but because,
forsooth, there was none other !

12

/ And time, with more state, brought more capacity
“ for luxury, and it became well that men should dwell in
large houses, and rest upon couches, and eat at tables ;
whereupon the artist, with his artificers, built palaces,
and filled them with furniture, beautiful in proportion
and lovely to look upon.

And the people lived in marvels of art—and ate and
drank out of masterpieces—for there was nothing else
to eat and to drink out of, and no bad building to live
in; no article of daily life, of luxury, or of necessity,
that had not been handed down from the design of the
master, and made by his workmen.

_. And the people questioned not, axd had nothing to
say in the matter.

So Greece was in its splendour, and Art reigned
supreme—by force of fact, not by election—and there
was no meddling from the outsider. The mighty
warrior would no more have ventured to offer a design
for the temple of Pallas Athene than would the
sacred poet have proffered a plan for constructing
the catapult.

And the Amateur was unknown—and the Dilettante
undreamed of !

And history wrote on, and conquest accompanied
civilisation, and Art spread, or rather its products were
carried by the victors among the vanquished from one
country to another. And the customs of cultivation
covered the face of the earth, so that all peoples con-
tinued to use what ¢he artist alone produced.

And centuries passed in this using, and the world
was flooded with all that was beautiful, until there

+3

arose a new Class, who discovered the cheap, and fore-
saw fortune in the facture of the sham.

Then sprang into existence the tawdry, the common,
the gew-gaw.

The taste of the tradesman supplanted the science of
the artist, and what was born of the million went back
to them, and charmed them, for it was after their own
heart ; and the great and the small, the statesman and
the slave, took to themselves the abomination that was
tendered, and preferred it—and have lived with it ever
since !

And the artist’s occupation was gone, and the manu-
facturer and the huckster took his place.

And now the heroes filled from the jugs and drank
from the bowls—with understanding—noting the glare of
their new bravery, and taking pride in its worth.

And the people—this time—had much to say in the
matter—and all were satisfied. And Birmingham and
Manchester arose in their might—and Art was relegated
to the curiosity shop.

¥4

Nature contains the elements, in colour and form, of
all pictures, as the keyboard contains the notes of all
music.

But the artist is born to pick, and choose, and group
with science, these elements, that the result may be
beautiful—as the musician gathers his notes, and forms
his chords, until he bring forth from chaos glorious
harmony.

To say to the painter, that Nature is to be taken as
she is, is to say to the player, that he may sit on the
piano.

-. That Nature is always right, is an assertion, artisti-

cally, as untrue, as it is one whose truth is universally
taken for granted. Nature is very rarely right, to such
an extent even, that it might almost be said that
Nature is usually wrong: that is to say, the condition
of things that shall bring about the perfection of
harmony worthy a picture is rare, and not common at
all.

This would seem, to even the most intelligent, a
doctrine almost blasphemous. So incorporated with
our education has the supposed aphorism become, that
its belief is held to be part of our moral being, and
the words themselves have, in our ear, the ring of
religion. Still, seldom does Nature succeed in producing

a picture.

The sun blares, the wind blows from the east,
the sky is bereft of cloud, and without, all is of

15

iron. The windows of the Crystal Palace are seen from
all points of London. The holiday maker rejoices in
the glorious day, and the painter turns aside to shut his
eyes.

How little this is understood, and how dutifully the
casual in Nature is accepted as sublime, may be gathered
from the unlimited admiration daily produced by a very
foolish sunset.

The dignity of the snow-capped mountain is lost in
distinctness, but the joy of the tourist is to recognise the
traveller on the top. The desire to see, for the sake of
seeing, is, with the mass, alone the one to be gratified,
hence the delight in detail.

And when the evening mist clothes the riverside
with poetry, as with a veil, and the poor buildings
lose themselves in the dim sky, and the tall chimneys
become campanili, and the warehouses are palaces
in the night, and the whole city hangs in the
heavens, and fairy-land is before us—then the
wayfarer hastens home; the working man and the
cultured one, the wise man and the one of pleasure,
cease to understand, as they have ceased to see, and
Nature, who, for once, has sung in tune, sings her
exquisite song to the artist alone, her son and her
master—her son in that he loves her, her master in
that he knows her.

To him her secrets are unfolded, to him her lessons
have become gradually clear. He looks at her flower,
not with the enlarging lens, that he may gather facts
for the botanist, but with the light of the one who sees
in her choice selection of brilliant tones and delicate
tints, suggestions of future harmonies

*

16

He does not confine himself to purposeless copying,
without thought, each blade of grass, as commended
by the inconsequent, but, in the long curve of the
narrow leaf, corrected by the straight tall stem, he
- learns how grace is wedded to dignity, how strength
enhances sweetness, that elegance shall be the result.

In the citron wing of the pale butterfly, with its
dainty spots of orange, he sees before him the stately
halls of fair gold, with their slender saffron pillars, and
is taught how the delicate drawing high upon the walls
shall be traced in tender tones of orpiment, and
repeated by the base in notes of graver hue.

In all that is dainty and lovable he finds hints for
his own combinations, and ¢hus is Nature ever his
resource and always at his service, and to him is
naught refused.

Through his brain, as through the last alembic, is
distilled the refined essence of that thought which
began with the Gods, and which they left him to carry
out.

Set apart by them to complete their works, he pro-
duces that wondrous thing called the masterpiece,
which surpasses in perfection all that they have con-
trived in what is called Nature; and the Gods stand by
and marvel, and perceive how far away more beautiful
is the Venus of Melos than was their own Eve.

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For some time past, the unattached writer has become
the middleman in this matter of Art, and his influence,
while it has widened the gulf between the people and
the painter, has brought about the most complete mis-
understanding as to the aim of the picture.

For him a picture is more or less a hieroglyph or
symbol of story. Apart from a few technical terms,
for the display of which he finds an occasion, the work
is considered absolutely from a literary point of view ;
indeed, from what other can he consider it? And in
his essays he deals with it as with a novel—a history—
or an anecdote. He fails entirely and most naturally
to see its excellences, or demerits—artistic—and so
degrades Art, by supposing it a method of bringing
about a literary climax.

It thus, in his hands, becomes merely a means of
perpetrating something further, and its mission is made
a secondary one, even as a means is second to an
end.

The thoughts emphasised, noble or other, are inevit-
ably attached to the incident, and become more or less
noble, according to the eloquence or mental quality of
the writer, who looks, the while, with disdain, upon what
he holds as “mere execution”—a matter belonging,
he believes, to the training of the schools, and the
reward of assiduity. So that, as he goes on with his
translation from canvas to paper, the work becomes

18

his own. He finds poetry where he would feel it were
he himself transcribing the event, invention in the
intricacy of the mzse en scene, and noble philosophy in
some detail of philanthropy, courage, modesty, or
virtue, suggested to him by the occurrence.

All this might be brought before him, and his imagina-
tion be appealed to, by a very poor picture—indeed, I
might safely say that it generally is.

Meanwhile, the pazuier’s poetry is quite lost to him—
the amazing invention, that shall have put form and
colour into such perfect harmony, that exquisiteness is
the result, he is without understanding—the nobility of
thought, that shall have given the artist’s dignity to the
whole, says to him absolutely nothing.

So that his praises are published, for virtues we would
blush to possess—while the great qualities, that distin-
guish the one work from the thousand, that make of
the masterpiece the thing of beauty that it is-—-have

never been seen at all.

That this is so, we can make sure of, by looking back
at old reviews upon past exhibitions, and reading the
flatteries lavished upon men who have since been for-
gotten altogether—but, upon whose works, the language
has been exhausted, in rhapsodies—that left nothing
for the National Gallery. :

A curious matter, in its effect upon the judgment of
these gentlemen, is the accepted vocabulary, of poetic
symbolism, that helps them, by habit, in dealing with
Nature: a mountain, to them, is synonymous with

Fit,

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an

19

height—a lake, with depth—the ocean, with vastness—
the sun, with glory.

So that a picture with a mountain, a lake, and an

ocean—however poor in paint—is inevitably “lofty,” ee

“vast,” “infinite,” and “glorious ”—on paper.

There are those also, sombre of mien, and wise with
the wisdom of books, who frequent museums and
burrow in crypts ; collecting—comparing—compiling—
classifying—contradicting.

Experts these—for whom a date is an accomplish-
ment—a hall mark, success !

Careful in scrutiny are they, and conscientious of
judgment—establishing, with due weight, unimportant
reputations—discovering the picture, by the stain on the
back—testing the torso, by the leg that is missing—fill-
ing folios with doubts on the way of that .limb—dis-
putatious and dictatorial, concerning the birthplace of
inferior persons—speculating, in much writing, upon
the great worth of bad work.

True clerks of the collection, they mix memoranda
with ambition, and, reducing Art to statistics, they
“file” the fifteenth century, and “ pigeon-hole” the
antique !

Then the Preacher—“ appointed ” !

He stands in high places—harangues and _ holds
forth.

20
Sage of the Universities—learned in many matters,
and of much experience in all, save his subject.
Exhorting—denouncing—directing.
Filled with wrath and earnestness.

Bringing powers of persuasion, and polish of language,
to prove nothing.

Torn with much teaching—having naught to impart.
Impressive—important—shallow.
Defiant—distressed—desperate.

Crying out, and cutting himself—while the Gods hear
not.

Gentle priest of the Philistine withal, again he
ambles pleasantly from all point, and through many
volumes, escaping scientific assertion—“babbles of
green fields.”

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Pa

_ So Art has become foolishly confounded with educa-
tion—that all should be equally qualified.

Whereas, while polish, refinement, culture, and
breeding, are in no way arguments for artistic result,
it is also no reproach to the most finished scholar or
greatest gentleman in the land that he be absolutely
without eye for painting or ear for music—that in his
heart he prefer the popular print to the scratch of
Rembrandt’s needle, or the songs of the hall to
Beethoven’s ‘‘C minor Symphony.”

Let him have but the wit to say so, and not feel the
admission a proof of inferiority.

Art happens—no hovel is safe from it, no Prince
may depend upon it, the vastest intelligence cannot
bring it about, and puny efforts to make it universal
end in quaint comedy, and coarse farce.

This is as it should be—and all attempts to make it
otherwise, are due to the eloquence of the ignorant,
the zeal of the conceited.

The boundary line is clear. Far from me to propose
to bridge it over—that the pestered people be pushed
across. No! I would save them from further fatigue.
I would come to their relief, and would lift from
their shoulders this incubus of Art.

Why, after centuries of freedom from it, and in-
difference to it, should it now be thrust upon them by
the blind—until, wearied and puzzled, they know no
longer how they shall eat or drink—how they shall sit
or stand—or wherewithal they shall clothe themselves
—without afflicting Art?

22

But, lo ! there is much talk without !

¢
Triumphantly they cry, “Beware! This matter
does indeed concern us. We also have our part in all
true Art !—for, remember the ‘one touch of Nature’
that ‘makes the whole world kin.’”

True, indeed. But let not the unwary jauntily sup-
pose that Shakespeare herewith hands him his pass-
port to Paradise, and thus permits him speech among
the chosen. Rather, learn that, in this very sentence,
he is condemned to remain without—to continue with
the common.

This one chord that vibrates with all—this “one
touch of Nature” that calls aloud to the response of
each—that explains the popularity of the “Bull” of
Paul Potter—that excuses the price of Murillo’s
“Conception” —this one unspoken sympathy that
pervades humanity, is—Vulgarity !

Vulgarity—under whose fascinating influence “the
many” have elbowed “the few,” and the gentle circle
of Art swarms with the intoxicated mob of mediocrity,
whose leaders prate and counsel, and call aloud, where
_the gods once spoke in whisper !

23

And now from their midst the Dilettante ‘stalks
abroad. The amateur is loosed. The voice of the
eesthete is heard in the land, and catastrophe is
upon us. .

The meddler beckons the vengeance of the gods, and
ridicule threatens the fair daughters of the land.

And there are curious converts to a weird cu/¢e, in
which all instinct for attractiveness—all freshness and
sparkle—all woman’s winsomeness—is to give way to
a strange vocation for the unlovely—and this desecra-
tion in the name of the Graces!

Shall this gaunt, ill-at-ease, distressed, abashed
mixture of mauvaise honte and desperate assertion, call
itself artistic, and claim cousinship with the artist—
who delights in the dainty—the sharp, bright gaiety
of beauty ?

No !—a thousand times no! Here are no connections
of ours.

We will have nothing to do with them.

Forced to seriousness, that emptiness may be hidden,
they dare not smile—

While the artist, in fulness of heart and head, is
glad, and laughs aloud, and is happy in his strength,
and is merry at the pompous pretension—the solemn
silliness that surrounds him.

For Art and Joy go together, with bold openness,
and high head, and ready hand—fearing naught, and ©
dreading no exposure.

Know, then, all beautiful women, that we are with
you. Pay no heed, we pray you, to this outcry of the
unbecoming—this last plea for the plain.

24

It concerns you not.

Your own instinct is near the truth—your own wit
far surer guide than the untaught ventures of thick-
heeled Apollos.

What ! will you up and follow the first piper that
leads you down Petticoat Lane, there, on a Sabbath,
to gather, for the week, from the dull rags of ages,
wherewith to bedeck yourselves? that, beneath your
travestied awkwardness, we have trouble to find your
own dainty selves? Oh, fie! Is the world, then,
exhausted? and must we go back because the thumb
of the mountebank jerks the other way ?

Costume is not dress.

And the wearers of wardrobes may not be doctors of
taste !

For by what authority shall these be pretty masters ?
Look well, and nothing have they invented—nothing
put together for comeliness’ sake.

Haphazard from their shoulders hang the garments
of the hawker—combining in their person the motley
of many manners with the medley of the mummers’
closet.

Set up as a warning, and a finger-post of danger,
they point to the disastrous effect of Art upon the
middle classes.

25

Why this lifting of the brow in deprecation of the
present—this pathos in reference to the past?

If Art be rare to day, it was seldom heretofore.
It is false, this teaching of decay.

The master stands in no relation to the moment at
which he occurs—a monument of isolation—hinting at
sadness—having no part in the progress of his fellow
men.

He is also no more the product of civilisation than
is the scientific truth asserted, dependent upon the
wisdom of a period. ‘The assertion itself requires the
man to make it. The truth was from the beginning.

So Art is limited to the infinite, and beginning there
cannot progress.

A silent indication of its wayward independence
from all extraneous advance, is in the absolutely un-
changed condition and form of implement since the
beginning of things.

The painter has but the same pencil—the sculptor
the chisel of centuries.

Colours are not more since the heavy hangings of
night were first drawn aside, and the loveliness of light
revealed.

Neither chemist nor engineer can offer new elements
of the masterpiece.

26

False again, the fabled link between the grandeur
of Art and the glories and virtues of the State, for Art
feeds not upon nations, and peoples may be wiped
from the face of the earth, but Art zs.

It is indeed high time that we .cast aside the weary
weight of responsibility and copartnership, and know
that, in no way, do our virtues minister to its worth,
in no way do our vices impede its triumph !

How irksome! how hopeless! how superhuman the
self-imposed task of the nation! How sublimely vain
the belief that it shall live nobly or art perish !

Let us reassure ourselves, at our own option is our
virtue. Art we in no way affect.

A whimsical goddess, and a capricious, her strong
sense of joy tolerates no dulness, and, live we never so
spotlessly, still may she turn her back upon us.

As, from time immemorial, has she done upon the
Swiss in their mountains.

What more worthy people! Whose every Alpine
gap yawns with tradition, and is stocked with noble
story ; yet, the perverse and scornful one will none of it,
and the sons of patriots are left with the clock that turns
the mill, and the sudden cuckoo, with difficulty restrained
in its box !

27
For this was Tell a hero! For this did Gessler die !

Art, the cruel jade, cares not, and hardens her heart,
and hies her off to the East, to find, among the opium-
eaters of Nankin, a favourite with whom she lingers
fondly—caressing his blue porcelain, and painting his
coy maidens, and marking his plates with her six marks
of choice—indifferent, in her companionship with him,
to all save the virtue of his refinement !

He it is who calls her—he who holds her!

And again to the West, that her next lover may
bring together the Gallery at Madrid, and show to the
world how ‘the Master towers above all; and in their
intimacy they revel, he and she, in this knowledge ;
and he knows the happiness untasted by other mortal.

She is proud of her comrade, and promises that, in
after years, others shall pass that way, and understand.

So in all time does this superb one cast about for
the man worthy her love—and Art seeks the Artist
alone.

Where he is, there she appears, and remains with him
—loving and fruitful— turning never aside in moments
of hope deferred—of insult—and of ribald misunder-
standing ; and when he dies she sadly takes her flight,
though loitering yet in the land, from fond association,
but refusing to be consoled.*

With the man, then, and not with the multitude, are
her intimacies ; and in the book of her life the names

* And so have
we the ephem-
eral influence of
the Master’s me-
mory—the after-
glow, in which
are warmed, for a
while, the worker
and disciple.

28

inscribed are few—scant, indeed, the list of those who
have helped to write her story of love and beauty.

From the sunny morning, when, with her glorious
Greek relenting, she yielded up the secret of repeated
line, as, with his hand in hers, together they marked,
in marble, the measured rhyme of lovely limb and
draperies flowing in unison, to the day when she
dipped the Spaniard’s brush in light and air, and made
his people live within their frames, and stand upon their
fegs, that all nobility and sweetness, and tenderness,
and magnificence should be theirs by right, ages had
gone by, and few had been her choice.

Countless, indeed, the horde of pretenders! But she
knew them not.

A teeming, seething, busy mass, whose virtue was
industry, and whose industry was vice !

Their names go to fill the catalogue of the collection
at home, of the gallery abroad, for the delectation of
the bagman and the critic.

29

Therefore have we cause to be merry !—and to cast
away all care—resolved that all is well—as it ever was
—and that it is not meet that we should be cried at,
and urged to take measures !

Enough have we endured of dulness! Surely are we
weary of weeping, and our tears have been cozened
from us falsely for they have called out woe! when
there was no grief—and, alas! where all is fair !

We have then but to wait—until, with the mark of
the gods upon him—there come among us again the
chosen—who shall continue what has gone _ before.
Satisfied that, even were he never to appear, the story
of the beautiful is already complete—hewn in the
marbles of the Parthenon—and broidered, with the
birds, upon the fan of Hokusai—at the foot of
Fusi-yama.

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funy
Aha we :
Rat ear ha ; : ‘ aya,